Word: funnyman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Coffee Break. Funnyman Bob Hope took a turn with the gavel, twitted Crooner Bing Crosby, whose new young wife is expecting a baby in August: "You can tell how important this tournament is to get Bing away from the nest. Bing had his last child 20 years ago. That's quite a coffee break." Comedian Hank Henry came on to peddle Texan Billy Maxwell and tried to swing a deal with one of the more belligerent celebrities in the crowd. "What am I bid for Elsa Maxwell? This would be a good buy for Walter Winchell. How about Elsa...
...Danny Thomas, the Hollywood M.C. on a Hollywood-Manhattan coaxial hookup: "They should never have comedians as presenters. Any comic on a dais figures he's got to do four or five minutes or the audience will think he's a bum." Milton Berle, TV's funnyman emeritus, quipped for 90 seconds longer than his allotted seven minutes. But like the man condemned to hang, Berle was as sassy as he liked, for there was nothing TV could threaten him with-the onetime Mr. Television has not had a steady job on TV since 1956. And without...
...Worlds. Thomas' TV self is Danny Williams, nightclub funnyman, father of two and harassed battler for his patriarchal rights. Says Thomas candidly: "The show is one cliche after another. Family life is that way. When we're corny, we don't let it get too far. We use what I call treacle cutters. For instance, the boy gets sore and runs away from home and tries to enroll himself in the orphan asylum as Elvis Earp. I find him and I take him in my arms and we make up and we talk about...
...forgot to gargle before keynoting a dockers' meeting. His trademark is his preposterous nose ("If you're going to have a nose, you ought to have a real one"). But the U.S.'s currently favorite tele-comedian, boasting no single towering talent, succeeds as a funnyman mostly because his humor seems to well up from a sizable heart. Or, as Danny Thomas puts it, citing his favorite philosopher, Lebanese Mystic Kahlil (The Prophet) Gibran: "Comedy and tragedy aren't very far apart. Like Gibran says, 'Your joy is your sorrow unmasked...
...spindly copy of Rally Round the Flag, Boys!) and laughs easy-at soggy puns, campus wheezes, G.I. antics and leering badinage about the hot-and-cold war between the sexes. As a humorist, Max (Barefoot Boy with Cheek) Shulman is a kind of roadhouse Wodehouse, a breezy, rattlebrained funnyman whose books can and probably should be read with...